Social Media and Inbound Marketing in 2011 - Where do you stand?

Social media impacts all other marketing forms because of inbound marketing. Inbound marketing utilizes blogs, SEO, and social media to make it easy for people to find you online. In America, 75% of people use social media and spend 15 minutes of every hour online on social media sites. The main ideas behind optimizing your social media engagement are as follows:
+ Be responsive
+ Be gracious
+ Answer questions
+ Respond to complaints

Walking the fine line between being social and selling can be a struggle. Produce content that is relevant to the needs of your target audience. You should still use coupons and deals such as Facebook Deals/Foursquare Deals, but if you over promote or are too self focused people will lose interest. If you're stumped for content, you can use polls and surveys to see what your target audience desires. Each social media site is unique, and so your content must vary in tone and personality depending on the approach for each social media site. Focus on the content and the lifestyle surrounding your business not just the features. People will share your content because they desire to contribute to the conversation, self-interest, altruism, validation, or affinity with the larger community.

Benefits of Social Media

• Generating exposure – 88%
• Increased traffic or subscribers – 72%
• Improved Search Ranking – 62%
• Resulted in new business partnerships – 56%
• Generated qualified leads – 51%
• Reduced overall marketing expenses – 49%
• Improved sales – 43%
  
  *image courtesy of Social Media Examiner
  

Optimizing on social media does require extensive time and labor. Only 50% of marketers have less than one year experience in social media marketing. Over half of marketers are spending over 6 hours each week (34% for more than 11 hours a week) on social media. Marketers spending more than 40 hours a week on social media have a great focus on video and blogs. 28% of marketers outsource social media tasks with the largest percentage being for design/development (17%).

#1 Focus for 2011 – Video Marketing/YouTube

56% of business are currently using YouTube, and 77% of marketers plan on increasing their video and/or YouTube marketing. For our current clients: Contact me with any questions regarding optimizing your community's video! If you're interested in a custom branded video for your community or a corporate video contact our team toll free at 866-778-7719 ext 1!

#2 Focus for 2011 - Facebook

550 million active users are on Facebook. 92% of businesses are currently using Facebook, and 75% of marketers plan on increasing their activities. 80% of B2C plan on increasing their Facebook efforts. See our previous posts regarding Facebook Business Pages vs Profile Pages and the new 2011 Facebook Business Page!

#3 Focus for 2011 – Blogs

Blogs have always been a strong area for social media marketers, and 75% of marketers are planning to increase their blogging activities. Businesses that link their blog to their Twitter account average 79% more followers.

Let us know!
What do you think of social media and inbound marketing?
What social media sites are you using?
What questions/comments do you have about your experience with social media?

Resources for more information
Graph and statistics in this post are from the 2011 Social Media Marketing Industry Report sponsored by Social Media Examiner
2011 State of Inbound Marketing report from Hubspot